Watch the eight episodes of Over -compulsory—The new drama of Amazon Prime video comedy created and with the social media star Benito Skinner – Several Questions crossed my mind. For example: when is it exactly supposed to be settled? We are told immediately that the character of Skinner, Benny, a first -year student of the gay college, made her sexual awakening were looking at a Brendan Fraser dressed in Lincloth swinging in the trees in George of the jungle (1997), and that he was about 9 years old in 2000 when “Lucky” by Britney Spears was still in the countdown. By my mathematics, this should mean that Benny heads for the university around 2010. However, at a given time from the program, Charli XCX – who, with Jonah Hill, among the executive producers of the series – inexplicably wakes up in this fiction college, singing songs in 2012, 2014 and 2017. Over -compulsory … Not a show that takes place today? But not a piece specifically of the millennium? Everything is very confusing.
The greatest and deepest question, however, does not concern Over -compulsoryThe time of time, but about his heart: who, exactly, is it? The show follows Benny, a former secondary football star, the majority of promotion, and the return king, while he begins university and is quickly attracted by Carmen (Wally Baram), another foreigner with whom he is determined to have sex in order to cancel his nascent homosexuality. In one way or another, the show manages to be both too gay for a hetero and too straight audience for the gay audience. It is not current enough to hold a mirror to viewers of the Z generation, when it arrived too late for the millennials who have no desire to relive their university days. It is simultaneously too auto-secret to be a strict comedy and too much at the surface level to contain a great dramatic weight. What remains for us, in the end, is a spectacle as confused as its repressed protagonist.
It may be very useful to think of this production, a collaboration between A24 and Amazon MGM Studios, mainly as a vehicle for its star. Skinner, also known online under the name of “Bennydrama7”, built an audience of more than 2.7 million Tiktok and Instagram followers through his celebrity impressions and sketches in which he regularly plays a variety of divas bearing a variety of wigs. (I met him for the first time years ago in a series of sketches in which he would terrorize the surprisingly voluntary mother of his boyfriend.) Unlike many other content creators or influencers, the main charms of Skinner do not reside in his appearance – although he is blessed with a brilliant complexion and a jaw that could cut glass – or in a lifestyle or a style of life or a special lifestyle. Above all, it is simply funny and fabulous, and offers a lively eye for the culture of celebrities. But as its following has grown up, Skinner has clearly exceeded its original roots – you are now also likely to see it splash in swimming pools with Besie Charli XCX or on the red carpet at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Over -compulsory is his great foray into Hollywood, a dream he obviously had an eye on years while building his.
The problem is the product itself. After several years of development, Over -compulsory Arrives at a time when Skinner is 31 years old and can no longer pass plausibly for the teenage version of himself. (At certain times in the series, he looks more in his place than Ben Platt played a teenager in 2021 Dear Evan Hansen.) As Benny, Skinner is more rigid and his voice is inferior to what we are used to Tiktok. Through a perpetually tight jaw, he says things like: “I love pussy.” (Over -compulsory was inspired by the time of Skinner to study at the University of Georgetown, where he did not go out as a gay before his last year, which means that there is a good chance that there was a little method that acts here.) However, Benny is also a red flag walked for, as a aunt of my friend said, having a little sugar in the tank. He cannot really master the right shiboboleth of the “wheelbarrow of the handshake” and says suspicious things like the way he thinks that Lorde is sexy. The best episodes of Skinner are when his character is gradually starting to entertain the possibility of being his authentic self, especially since he falls more in love with Miles classmates (Rush Shah). It is in these moments that we obtain all too created flashes of the skinner that we know and love: more loose, happier, perhaps even a small camp. Don’t get me wrong: I know from experience that the coming takes time, but as a spectator, I am much more interested in what that Benny’s version would have been like.
As a show, Over -compulsory Share a lot of DNA with The sex life of college studentsThe comedy that was recently canceled after three seasons on Max. But where this show had four central characters to worry, Over -compulsory Really has only two tracks, Benny and Carmen, so he feels naturally smaller in comparison. This does not mean that there are no other people who float (especially a bunch of tiktok stars in what could be a nod to the Skinner roots-or it may be he himself presenting his famous friends). The mononymous actor Holmes is particularly strong as a roommate Ditzy de Carmen Hailee (one of the few really funny characters in the series), while Owen Thiele brings a silent dignity to the role of George, the chief of the LGBTQ Alliance campus, who can see Benny before he can see himself. Adam Dimarco, of season 2 of The white lotusis always present as Peter, the fraternal boyfriend of Benny Grace’s sister (Mary Beth Barone), but he is also emblematic of what is wrong with Over -compulsory: Spending time with him, not to mention eight whole episodes, can feel like a deeply unpleasant experience.
Skinner is talented. He is charismatic. He looks like a human (free) Ken doll, and I hope he has a great career in front of him. But while Over -compulsory is undoubtedly a profoundly personal project for him, he feels fundamentally as bad to launch him as a comic actor. Why not follow the path, let’s say, Issa Rae, who managed to transform Youtube’s reputation in PrecariousA much better comedy in part because she reflects who her creator was when she did, who she was? Lena Dunham did something similar when she gave the world Girls. As is the case, however, Over -compulsory To the strange distinction of being a spectacle centered on a gay character which is in a way almost entirely on the heteros. It is exhausting to spend hours and hours listening to boys Frat, and yet because of Benny’s desire to hang out with these people, it’s almost entirely this Over -compulsory served. There are only so many statements of “Titty Fuck”, “Bitches”, “Puss Puss”, “Bazinga” and “Tell the whores to ride” that I can take – and, of course, the omnipresent “no homo”, a message that Over -compulsory It seems strangely insists on delivery.
